Before wireless communication networks, setting up a computer network in a business or residential area often required running cables through walls and ceilings in order to deliver network access to all of network-enabled devices. With the creation of a wireless Access Point (AP), network users may be able to add the network-enabled stations (STAs) or devices that access a network with few or no cables. The AP may support one or more standards or specifications for sending or receiving data using radio frequencies. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE provides standards, such IEEE 802.11, that defines frequencies of the AP.
Despite recent technologies to improve performance of wireless communications networks, to be on par with wired communications networks, network congestion and instability may still be a common problem. For example, when a large number of STAs (e.g., laptap computers, tablet computers, smart phones, etc.) associated to an AP contend for media at the same time, collisions may occur. Further, traffic indication map (TIM) in the AP that identifies buffer frames for sleeping STAs may become very large and waste significant medium time. Under the current IEEE 802.11 standard, the AP does not schedule different STAs into different beacon interval for medium access purposes.
In the 802.11 standard, the AP indicates whether there is buffered downlink traffic for a STA in the TIM element. The corresponding bit may be set to I for multiple consecutive beacon intervals until the buffered traffic is cleared. However, when there are many STAs in a basic service set (BSS), the TIM element can become very big, which may cause an overly bloated beacon frame.